


Feels Like Hope

by kaasknot



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Gen, Self-Mutilation, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-31 01:05:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3958651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaasknot/pseuds/kaasknot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Nux," Slit says as they sit on the edge of the West Tower, their feet dangling out over nothing, "We've gotta be strong, yeah? Bein' a War Boy ain't for the weak ones. The Immortan only takes the very strongest and bravest. You'n me? We're the very strongest, the very bravest." He throws his arm over Nux's shoulder and takes a swallow of the rotgut liquor they stole from the Organic Mechanic's still.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feels Like Hope

His earliest memory is more sensation than anything. He remembers warmth, and a hand brushing through his hair, and a soft voice humming. He can hear a heartbeat against his ear, and the vibrations of the voice through the chest he is laying on. He thinks maybe it was his mother, before he was taken away to the kennels. He's not sure. He doesn't tell any of his brothers, in case they laugh at him for having such soft dreams.

"Nux," Slit says as they sit on the edge of the West Tower, their feet dangling out over nothing, "We've gotta be strong, yeah? Bein' a War Boy ain't for the weak ones. The Immortan only takes the very strongest and bravest. You'n me? We're the very strongest, the very bravest." He throws his arm over Nux's shoulder and takes a swallow of the rotgut liquor they stole from the Organic Mechanic's still.

"You'n me," Nux echoes, his mind caught on memories of his mother. "Together."

"For the glory of Immortan Joe." Slit passes over the bottle, and Nux takes a sip. He breathes out the fumes to keep from coughing. Tomorrow is the Big Rip, when they'll move from Pups and become full War Boys. A snarl of apprehension is eating at Nux's stomach, but that could be his ulcers.

"I want to be a driver," he says suddenly, the words tumbling out of him like aqua cola from the sluices.

Slit blinks for a moment. "Then I'll be your lancer." He spits in his palm and holds it out. Nux does the same, and clasps their hands together. "It's a water-bond," Slit says. "We'll ride to battle together, and die together, shiny and chrome before the Immortan."

"D'you think he'll be waiting for us, when we die?" Nux asks. The Immortan is a distant figure, living up in the North Tower behind the Great Sigil carved in the rock. Nux feels a stir of something wild and light in his heart whenever he catches a glimpse of him, something that threatens to raise him clear off his feet just at the thought of holy eyes resting on his unworthy face. It's happened before, War Boys singled out for Blessing by the Immortan. Death in battle is glorious, but death at the Immortan's own hand... Nux swallows against the longing pull of hope, and winces at the stab in his throat. He'll show tumors on his neck in a few years, he's sure.

"Sure, he will," Slit says. "He's the Immortan." He has the confidence of a boy twice his age; Nux takes strength from it, and takes another sip of moonshine.

Tomorrow, they'll have their lips sewn shut. Tomorrow, they'll tear their way into adulthood. He drinks, and he swallows back fear.

***

"You're pretty keen behind a wheel, ain't you," the Ace says, perched outside the window on the running board.

Nux's heart is caught up in his throat; his nerves jangle and hum. The buggy's stopped, but he can still feel the thrum of its engine through his bones, feels each bump of the ride up his spine. A cloud of dust hovers behind him; the pennants, limp in the still air, snap in his memory. He looks helplessly at the Ace.

The Ace laughs. "Yeah, you are." He's a craggy old War Boy: lumps march down his neck and shoulder, and scars--both purposeful and the haphazard badges of battle--ribbon his chest and arms. His mouth is a saggy slash in his tired face. He's getting old, for a War Boy; he'll take a Witnessed leap soon, or die an old man. "Fresh-ripped and ready for your death, you are. Well, boy, it's my job to teach you to drive this buggy, and if you can't do it right, the only glory you'll be getting is through the holes in the dunny. I'll get it so you can recite the parts of an engine backwards in your sleep, yeah?"

Nux isn't the only fresh-ripper out on the flats. Slit's somewhere out there with Coriolis, and he can hear Kutch's reedy voice screaming bloody murder as Muddle hounds him on a dirt bike over the foothills. He feels a pang for Shrike, but he's a year younger and still a baby. Pride swells in his chest. He's a man now, with his very own wheel to customize and lay claim to. War Boys hold everything in common but their wheels. Nux runs cracked, dry fingers over the bare hub and imagines the possibilities.

"Hey, you listening to me, pup?" The Ace's hand connects with the back of Nux's head, nearly driving him face first into the wheel he'd just been admiring. He bares his teeth in embarrassment, stifling his wince of pain when the scabs over his lips split open.

"I'm not a pup!"

"Yeah, you're thirteen whole years. What a plenty. Your half-life is just started, _pup_ , and it'll end twice as quick if you don't listen to your driving lessons. You're the teeth of the Citadel, boy. You can't drive properly, you defang the Immortan. A tooth don't question, it bites. So you gonna talk back, or are you gonna get to biting?"

Nux runs his tongue over his torn lips. He can taste blood, but that's nothing new, these days; he's near sure blood and sand are all he needs to live.

"I'll bite," he says. His voice rasps dry in his throat. The wind is picking up; he can smell the distant tang of chemicals rising from the dunes.

"Damn right, you will," the Ace says, patting his sunburned shoulder. "We'll make a regular blackthumb out of you, yet."

***

There's not much difference, being a War Boy. There's more driving, for sure. Nux could spend his life screaming across the dunes at speed, but guzzoline is worth more than he is, and unless he's got a purpose he's got no business being behind a wheel.

Mostly it's guard duty. Guarding the Wretched, guarding the cars, guarding the frontiers. He gets used to tedium and the burning weight of the sun direct on his back and reflected from the sand. He builds his reputation; soon he's guarding the crops. He keeps scavengers away, human and not, and doesn't touch so much as a leaf. That's not for him.

Once, he guarded the cisterns. That was sweet, cruel work: he stood in the caves for a full shift, away from the sun but within arms reach of all the water he could drink. The whole time his skin itched with want. Just a touch, just a sip, no one would know...

No one guards the cisterns for very long. Even the Ace, who's been riding caravans to Gas Town and the Bullet Farm for years, hasn't done more than a dozen shifts at the cisterns. It's only wise, Nux figures. Everyone's addicted to water, and the Immortan knows better than to tempt his men with it too often.

It's the Coriolis Defect who teaches him how to throw a spear. He's the best marksman in the War Boys. He's parceled out a special ration of bullets each time the convoys go through, just for his rifle. He carves them with the Immortan's sigil when he goes hunting. Nux isn't much of a student; he's got muscle, but it's weak. Rictus he's not. Best suited for driving, really; a shrimp like him can keep an engine running long after the lancers and polecats fall off their perches. Coriolis teaches him anyway. Everyone knows how to do it all, from lancing to driving to flaming to poling to fighting. When he gets tired of Nux he hands him off to Berserker Beat for hand-to-hand.

The third time his face meets the packed sand of the training hall Nux promises himself he'll die chrome in a fireball. It's better than getting his face beaten in.

***

"I heard the Immortan took a new wife," Shrike murmurs into the humid air between their bodies. Nux is half-asleep from sex, his body lax and warm the way it almost never is. He huffs an acknowledgement.

Shrike traces a finger over the scars on Nux's chest. "I've never seen a woman up close."

"You've seen Imperator Furiosa." Goosebumps break out over Nux's arms and back at the touch.

"Dunno if she counts. Does she?"

Nux shrugged a shoulder. "I guess. She's got tits, and all."

"You wouldn't know it to look at her. All she needs is white paint and you couldn't tell her from the brothers."

A smile lifts the corner of Nux's mouth. "Think we'd notice."

Shrike grins back, sheepish and broad. "Maybe." He leans his forehead against Nux's, breathing in his air. "Not sure I'd know what to do with a woman, is the thing. They're supposed to be soft and small, and I hear they smell good. Better than your sorry arse, anyhow."

They scuffle, and Nux kicks him out of his bunk, and his trousers after him. "I'll remember that, the next time you've got an itch you want scratched," he says in a hushed voice. There's no chance they haven't woken somebody, if not from their fight then from fucking earlier. It's still good manners to keep as quiet as they can.

Shrike just laughs up at him, pulling his trousers up over his bony arse and punching Nux in the stomach before running off down the corridor to his barrack and bunk. Nux sighs and scrubs halfheartedly at the crust of jizz against his belly.

He figures there's no point dreaming about women. Only the best are treated to them, and Nux is far from the best. He only lets himself dream of Valhalla, now.

***

It's a rave day. The loamy scent of wet earth rises up from the aqua-cola spill, heady and rich. The fires in the Shrine are lit up, belching the raw stink of gas; they light up the Immortan's holy face in a lurid wash of red and yellow. His dais is surrounded by racks of wheels, his carven feet stained dark with offerings. The living Immortan won't come to this rave; he only comes down when battles have been fought.

No battles have been fought in far too long.

The War Boys are cooped up, tense from lack of action; the only ones seeing any sort of movement are the ones escorting the convoys, and they're so routine they've gone soft. The old gits squint into the sun and climb the cliffs to keep themselves hard. They're a hissing radiator, Nux figures; a rave will bleed some of the air.

The Doof Warrior is shredding it with the drummers, blind behind the face of his dead mother stretched over his own. Nux holds up his wheel and screams, mingling his voice with the shouts of his brothers. He's sick, he knows it. His hands shake on the gear shaft of his car, and his nights are getting hot and restless. He's afraid of dying in his sleep, the way Muddle did two weeks back. Ragged chords from the amp stack pulse through the air, lifting the dust in waves off the ground. Nux lets himself disappear into the rhythm, into the heartbeats of his brothers, the brushes of skin against his.

He doesn't let himself think. He lays his wheel at the Immortan's feet, takes the mushroom Slit presses on him, and loses himself.

It can't be called a dance. It's too raw for that. They stomp and they jump and they scream, writhing in a frenzy until their blood is hot as a fever. The Shrine flickers in the light of the gas flares. Nux feels light and free; he laughs. The Immortan may not be here, but this release from pain is his blessing. The world spins; glimpses flash past: Slit cutting open his cheeks to offer his blood to the Immortan; the Ace and the Coriolis Defect whirling driveshafts around their heads in mock battle; a couple of polecats wearing their masks across their chests jump up beside the Doof Warrior to swallow guzzoline and spit fire.

Organic appears at some point, hollering and hefting a keg of his homebrew. Nux's memories splinter apart after that. 

***

"There's been too much peace," Slit mutters, kicking a stone down the tunnel. "We'll never get into Valhalla." Nux doesn't reply. He's cold but for the burning ache in his throat where Larry and Barry are digging in. Kutch drew smiley faces on them with axle grease the day before, when the pain was so sharp his breath came in short bursts; it helped some.

"Maybe Gas Town will revolt," he offers. It's a weak offering. Slit gives him a disparaging look. Nux shrugs. It's possible.

"The _Imperators_ are more likely to revolt than the People Eater or the Farmer," Kutch says quietly. Kutch says everything quietly. He never spoke much before, but the goiter dangling from his chin is squeezing his voice dry.

Slit catches him across the back of the head. "You say shit like that, it'll come true," he hisses. "Come on. We've got shifts." They collect their water rations and part ways.

Nux drinks his ration of water and tries to keep his legs from buckling in the auto shop. A scout came in an hour earlier, saying they spotted a drifter up on the ridges, driving a salvaged interceptor. Nux keeps his ears peeled; maybe he can drive out with the sortie, and get his Witnessed end that way.

It comes to nothing. He collapses at the welding station before the sun's halfway up. They haul him off to Organic's workshop like so much dead meat, his toes dragging in the dust. Slit sees as they pass the armory. Nux can't look him in the eye. He isn't weak, he isn't a woman, that he should die in bed. Tears burn his eyes.

He withstands the Organic Mechanic's attentions in a dull wash of resentment. He could take that knife right there and stab him in the eye. Probably. If he weren't so damned tired.

"Enh," Organic says. "Cancer's acting up again. You've got it in your blood, now."

Nux grunts.

"Well, I'll put you in for the next bloodbag," Organic says, slapping him on the back. "Get to your quarters, we're not wasting guzzoline on you, today." He barks a laugh. "You'd as likely drive into a gopher hole and blow yourself up!" His chuckles echo off the bare rock as he leaves. Nux curls in on himself in shame.

He'll never see Valhalla. No one'll Witness a sickly fucker like him.

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe someday I'll explore a little deeper into the social dynamics of an all-male warrior culture based on desperation and performative masculinity, but it is not this day. For now, have this slightly less violent offering. I'm also on [tumblr](http://kaasknot.tumblr.com/post/119220876294/feels-like-hope).


End file.
